It opens slowly, starting out with some Washington politics as a lame-duck president writes his last pardons before he’s replaced. One of those goes to Joel Backman, a lawyer and lobbyist on the hill who created the political scandal that enabled him to first become president. There are conditions attached to the pardon, though, and Joel is smuggled out of America and into Italy where he is expected to live in a CIA safehouse and learn Italian.

All the while, he is being closely watched by American agents. When the time is right, they plan to leak news of his location simultaneously to all the major world powers to discover who is most interested in the intelligence information that Joel managed to obtain as a broker. The first to kill or capture him will tell the CIA what they need.

Unfortunately, the information about a secret system of satellites and the programs to control them are actually in possession of our mysterious broker. Querying him directly would probably be more efficient. As it is, he escapes the CIA custody, flees to Zurich, recovers his funds, and makes it back into the US to negotiate with the government, software in tow. The foreign nations so bent on killing him generally realize that he’s no longer a good target and back off. The CIA stops messing with him.

And, in typical Grisham style, the book ends happily, reuniting Joel with his slightly younger but very attractive Italian tutor.

Quite frankly, the book sucks. You’ll get at least as much from the Snort users manual, which is a free 90 page introduction to Snort. It’s 1/3 as long as Snort for Dummies, and fits in more content with less cruft. The first three chapters of Snort for Dummies introduce the software and its requirements. Why not read Snort – Lightweight Intrusion Detection for Networks and the Snort FAQ? Chapters 4 and 5 cover installation for Windows and Linux–but so does Snort’s Windows and Linux guides. The remaining chapters cover basic snort usage and configuration, and by basic, I mean basic. There’s nothing in there not in the manual, and explanation is not needed–how they manage to stretch out the material for four hundred pages, I do not know.

So, Snort for Dummies gets the lowest rating I can give: :1star:. Really–just read the manual.

a quote in To the Lighthouse struck me as a good summary of that book: “a family of unrelated passions”
if that is a capsule description of TTL, then “family of connected and intertwined passions” could describe sons and lovers. people seemed to have felt more, to reacted with more force, breathed with more intensity 100 years ago than they do today. there are only several main characters: Mrs. Morel, Paul, Clara and Miriam. There is really only one plot: Paul’s struggle to realize his role as a son and as a lover (hence the title).

the best parts of the book are when lawrence turns each character inside out and dissects, traces and maps their passions. i wish i had another word for passion– a mixture of desire, force, intention and want– a craving. people in this book are human and flesh. but they seem maybe more human than we are– their every days are filled wiht color and movement, not an aritficial heightening of emotion, but a very real possession with the everyday. Its a celebration of the primitive emotions and tasks of life. but very very beautiful.

The book claims to be divided into three sections: Sexual Liberties, Above the Law, and Bad Heroes. In actuality, it’s really just one continuous section. The theme of Out of Bounds never changes. It’s all about how NBA players commit sexual and physical violence due to a basketball culture that gives immature men everything they want and never says “no.” The book also explains how NBA players get preferential treatment in the US justice system, often avoiding charges or simply doing community service for crimes that would put an average citizen behind bars for life.

It’s an eye-opener for sure, but I am only giving it a three-star rating: :3star:. There are a few problems with the book. First, its material is repetitive. We see the story case by case by case, with little explanation or variance in the narrative. Hearing about NBA players committing violent crime is only interesting if it serves something higher. Second, there’s a lack of explanation for the crimes themselves. I feel as if Out of Bounds is just a photogallery of crime. I wonder why? Why do they commit crime they know they will be caught for? Why do they spurn authority and order? Why do they have a predelection for crime in the first place? Why does the NBA allow it? Instead, all I get is a picture of how these crimes go on and on. This, I think, is the most serious academic failure of the book. Otherwise, it’s an entertaining and informative read.

Another resource in evaluating this book is its own website from Harper Academic.

The book takes off where the last one left off. Druid Walker is dying, and his legacy is a reborn Isle-Witch. Transformed by the mystic sword of Shannara, the Isle-Witch realizes the full weight of her childhood deception and becomes a catatonic Grianne. It ultimately takes her brother Bek’s forgiveness and love to bring her back to full reality. Her true self, she confronts her old mentor Morgawr, and with the help of her brother defeats him.

There are numerous side-tales, however. Airship battles, strange reptilian creatures, wraiths and shapeshifters, and some magic swords all help make the book come a little more alive. But, in the multiple threads, the story is lost. When a half dozen different parties are slowly reunited, the content you can include for each party is pretty low. So we get to watch in grand overview the reuniting of the party, the defeat of their enemy, and a love triangle between Bek, his sister Grianne, and his girlfriend Rue Meridian. Still, it’s not enough–there’s far too much overview, and not enough detail.

For that reason, I’m giving Morgawr :2star:. It doesn’t have the richness of Tolkien, or the action you find in a Mercedes Lackey novel, but in the end, it’s still not a terrible read–give it a go if you’ve nothing else to do, or like me just want to finish the series.

since feeling is first

since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;

wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world

my blood approves,
and kisses are a far better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don’t cry
–the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids’ flutter which says

we are for eachother: then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life’s not a paragraph

And death i think is no parenthesis

and then i went into college not enjoying the picking apart and the.. general… obvious-ness? of shakespeare (Tho i did like that his plays were very fast. none of this tension building and on and on climax climbing.
foreshadowing in 2 lines yes, 500 page monologues? no)
then i am in shakespeare classand… yknow? things like… “virtue is a fig!” and “who cannot be crushed by a plot” and “simply the thing i am shall make me live” (othello/alls well that ends well, respectively) make me that shakespeare felt highs and lows in acute manner… in 1600.

so reading hamlet again was good; though in all of shakespeare, it seems as if there is a theme of doubleness/straightforwardness. what DOESN’T have to do with appearance and dissembling the interior??
or maybe its my prof who loves to dwell on such things

Michael T. Heath’s Scientific Computing: An Introductory Survey is the textbook of choice for Numerical Analysis, Scientific Computing, or a 400-level Linear Algebra course. Note that this is only an introduction to Numerical Analysis; students looking for an in-depth resource will be disappointed at the broad overview given in Heath.

Contents

Scientific Computing is described in the first chapter, giving its historical origins, modern necessity, and a brief treatment of computational error. Thereafter, we leap straight into computation. Systems of linear equations, linear least squares, eigenvalues, non-linear equations, optimization, interpolation, integration and differentiation, initial and boundary value problems, partial differential equations, the fast fourier transform, and random numbers and simulation are the topics Heath covers, in 13 chapters.

A first semester’s introduction would cover chapters 1 through 6, up to optimization, saving the more salient advanced topics for a second semester’s discussion.

Quality:

It’s the attention to detail that makes this book shine. Every chapter includes a historical anecdote at the end, tangentially describing the history and future of the techniques in that chapter. Examples are littered everywhere, and algorithms are set apart in special code boxes with line numbers. Matrices and vectors are set off in an easy to read bold typeface, while chapters are split up in sections that slowly progress from introduction to advanced algorithms, each section building on the contents of the previous. Homework questions are included after each chapter. My only complaint is that odd-numbered solutions are not included in the textbook, as is common in most other mathematics textbooks.

Rating: :5star:

While sparse on the details of many of the algorithms and theorems mentioned, as an introduction, it covers a broad range of material–enough for two semesters of study. The writing is lucid, and when a proof of a theorem is given, it is easy to follow and explained in english afterward. Rationale is given for everything, which is a great benefit to a student not familiar with the nuances of sophisticated linear algebra.

Details:

• Edition: Second
• Type: Hardcover
• ISBN: 0072399104
• Length: 563 pages
• Publisher: McGraw-Hill

Other Resources

• Buy it on Amazon.com